Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for taking the time to join us for this virtual launch of the Maricana Renewal Program. My name is Laguerre Mataza and I will be your host. Today's launch marks an important milestone on commitments made during the August 2020 inaugural Marikana Memorial Lecture titled Marikana Honor, Engage, Create. Last year's inaugural memorial lecture was hosted not only to acknowledge the tragic loss of 44 lives during the events leading up to and on the 16th August 2012, but to announce a commitment to honor, engage and create beyond our joint legacy of pain and trauma.
We must never forget how we as people forgot our common humanity and spiraled into anger, violence and tragedy. The tragedy of Marikana is best described by the dinogang scenarios as a state of walking apart. The years that have followed since have seen us as citizens, private sector and various levels of government oscillate between a state of walking apart and walking behind, where many of us have adopted a state of saying, let us wait and see, a mentality that does not move us forward. This morning's virtual launch of the Maragana Renewal program marks the beginning of an important shift and invitation to all of us to be intentional about walking together in the community of Madelgana and beyond. Today, we recommit to leading with Ubuntu in order to heal, rebuild trust and walk together to reimagine an inclusive future in the service to our common humanity.
A bit of housekeeping. Our program today has been broken up into prerecorded contributions followed by a live Q and A session. This format is aimed at minimizing technical glitches that may come with varying strengths of signal and connectivity. Our order of video contributions will begin with Uma Amaou Ayesha Fundi, Archbishop John Mahova and Umshle Gersenio Fornomen followed by short animated videos capturing some of the work and ground that has been covered since we last convened August 2012 excuse me, 2020. Please feel free to submit your questions during the contribution, our technical team can organize them for the live Q and A.
We will use the Engage portion of this program to set a foundation for the many possibilities that continue the work that has been done around creating a better future for all. And with that said, I would like to hand over to a message from Uma Moai Shafundi.
The renewal to me means if all of us we see it as a stakeholders, every individual. Stakeholders, I mean the families, I mean the company, I mean the community, I mean the royal house, I mean the ordinary mine workers. I mean everyone was involved. I mean, all the labor, movements. Any all people that were involved during Marigana.
If we all come together and acknowledge that whatever happened in Marigana 2012 was wrong, and we sit down and want to unite, and let us start again, restart again, the process again, sit down amicably and discuss what is the future for us. We want, personally, I want people to see Marikana differently in future. For example, during the the consultation with the newly demo project, they they call us in several meetings where they wanted us to come and and brainstorm what is it that can be done in future because at the end of the day, mining has a life. And when the mining life ends, Marikana Steel is a community. We want to change the people, from the from the communities.
When they see Marigana, they must see Marigana as a rebirth Marigana. Something they they must see it as a positive. They have to draw the positive out of Marikana. No. At least.
And then during that brainstorming, personally, we we were we come up with different opinions. I personally told you the guys when we are busy pursuing me that I believe because I am an educator by profession, and I believe there's one gift that you can ever give a person is education. If Marigana because it is a mining industry. If Marigana will emerge into a big education institution like Marigana, a big academy, the academy that will offer a mining mining related causes, the academy that will offer safety, security, agriculture, all the mining related causes. They they have the mining that is established.
And if they establish a big institution as a training center, we'll be able to teach people and take their people underground whatever to teach them practically. Because if you look the whole of South Africa, like, in Northwest on its own, we we don't have that big institution. We when our kids need skills, they must go Gauteng and do it. So if the the Marikana will be big, that's a big academy, it's going to be ever forever sustainable to the community. So that that for me will I'll make peace.
And also, as part of involvement, if we are getting involved, we need the company to involve us. It mustn't just be a consolidation now, we should be included, all of us, and we should participate fully, all of us. And at the end of the day, somehow, it can bring us all of us closer. It can bring some kind of reconciliation, which I've been dreaming of. Because when they bring the the priest, the pastor, everyone involved, and the city will learn to reconcile with each other and will learn to reconcile and put that one as a history.
A true message of the commitment to listening to one another and facilitating a commitment to a journey of walking together. And to deliver this morning's keynote address is a recording of Archbishop Mahkova handing over to the team.
Good day. My name is Archbishop Thabo Mahkoban, and greetings to you all. I'm very pleased to be able to speak to you virtually today. 1 of the spin offs of the terrible time of illness and death we are going through has been the rapid growth in the use of electronic communications. Although its use on occasions such as this is a consequence of tragedy, at times like ours, we need to look for even small signs of hope.
And the way in which technology has improved our capacity to respond to crisis is one of those signs. The 16th August 2012 was a day that changed South Africa. The shocking events that took place at the Kopi in Marikana lifted a mirror to the country. It challenged us to ask: who were we as a country? How did we allow ourselves to get to that point?
How could we have allowed conditions to arise which set off such wanton killing? More specifically, we had to ask, were we so unable to speak to each other to find common cause, but those deaths were inevitable. We must not mince words. That fault lay everywhere. To one degree or another, we were all implicated.
The legacy of Marikana is built on the blood of fallen colleagues who were sacrificed in a battle of ideologies. If we are to honour them, we need to continue to hold up a mirror to ourselves, to engage in self reflection and self examination and to ask whether we have done everything we can to ensure that such suffering is never inflicted on the working people and communities of this country. Have NGOs, churches and all in the non profit sector done all we can, have mine owners, managers, workers and unions? Are the cause doing all they can to bring justice? Have the government and the police done all they can to prevent a repeat?
We also need to use this tragedy as a blueprint for healing and restoration, beginning with bringing closure and dignity to the people of Marikana. While many of us may think we have moved on, we need to recognize that those most intimately and cruelly affected will continue to need their pain acknowledged. They will continue to need help and support to move on with their lives. And to that end, all the partners in the process need genuinely to want to be part of the solution. Marie Kana continues to challenge all of us to reflect deeply and honestly on our places in South Africa as it is and as we want it to be.
That is the key phrase I want you to think about, South Africa as we want it to be. A country where all people live with dignity, in peace and are able to flourish. A country where our differences are spoken about, where we address our challenges together, building side by side rather than facing each other in conflict. A country where our collective spirit and focus allows each person to travel their own path, but towards a common good. Now 9 years after the incident at Marikala, let us reflect on where we are and where we want to be.
Recent court rulings will have again highlighted our differences and our challenge. Our challenge as a people and as a country to find common ground established on a mutual recognition of truth and justice, to overcome our differences and to work with common purpose for the common good of all of us. It is time to look across from where we sit at our neighbors, at our friends and at our opponents to reach out and to begin to heal together, to begin the slow and difficult process of finding closure, to recognize each other's pain, and to help one another solve that pain. Please reach across the chasms that separate us to begin to build bridges and in South Africa for everyone. Find partners.
Find them near and far. Find people who you agree with and importantly those you disagree with. It will be tough at times. It will involve working through disagreement, trauma and even aggression. But our survival depends on genuinely wanting to be part of the healing and building of our country.
And it must be a country where not a single person will suffer again in the way that led to Marikana. We can remember the past, but now we have to build the future. As we approach the 10th anniversary of Marikana next year, we have to offer a new reality, which re imagines the future of Marikana, a community that is united, has found healing and is working at restoring itself and gearing itself up for greater heights. I thank you and God bless you. More importantly, God loves you, and so do I.
For reinforcing a message of hope by asking important questions of how we all allowed this to happen on our watch. While actions took place in a very specific locality, it is key for us to acknowledge the role we played as bystanders. And with this invitation today, we need to ask ourselves as existing and future partners of renewal, what constructive role we can all play in working together to ensure we never repeat such in Marigana and in any other part of South Africa. And as leader of the institution that has initiated the renewal, I'd like to hand over to a recorded message from Neil.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. First of all, I want to express my deep appreciation to his grace, Archbishop Thabo MacKoba, for his wisdom and guidance. We take to heart the comments he has made today and in particular, the role that we can and should play as a company and as a neighbor in healing and in developing a collaborative way forward. When Sibanye Stillwater acquired the Moricana operations in June 2019, we understood that an integral part of the assimilation of these operations would be the need to recognize the tragic events in which 44 people died between 10th 16th August in 2012 and to understand what this meant for the people who were left behind. In many ways, these events represented an inflection point in South Africa and in the mining industry.
We know that as a company, we did not even exist at that time. But despite that, we believe that we have an important role to play going forward. At Sibanye Stillwater, we believe we have been given an opportunity and a responsibility to live up to our purpose of improving lives through responsible mining. This is something we believe in and seek to live by wherever we operate. It's our hope that through delivering tangible and sustainable programs for the benefit of local communities around Marikana, a new legacy of healing and hope will emerge.
There are 3 core building blocks for this vision. First, to honor the lives that were lost and to support those for whom the loss was the greatest. We erected a wall of remembrance at the main entrance of the Morikana operations as part of acknowledging the victims of the tragedy. We provide ongoing counseling to the Widows and their children and have committed to building all the outstanding houses for the Widows. So far, we have handed over 7 houses and 8 are at different stages of construction.
The delivery of the 15 outstanding houses will be completed by the end of this year. Through the Lonmin Memorial Fund, Sibanye Stillwater supported the education of 89 dependents at a total cost of 3,600,000 dollars 5 of these dependents completed their final year of school in 2020 with 9 at tertiary level. Through the 16.8 Memorial Fund, we continue to support 141 beneficiaries through counseling and educational assistance. The trust spent 6,500,000 dollars in educational assistance in 2020 alone. An important part of honoring the lives that were lost is also pursuing justice, and we have committed to do this, and this process is now well underway.
The second building block is engagement. We are part of a community and partners in the creation of a new future. To be able to achieve this, we need to listen as well as speak. We need to collaborate and not impose, and we need to forge a mutually beneficial way forward, knowing that as a company, we are but one role player in the community in which we live and work. Our relationship and engagement with our doorstep communities in South Africa is expected to be greatly enhanced in 2021 with our efforts to rebuild trust and formalize the Social and Economic Compact, largely based on the Zambezi Protocol.
The Zambezi Protocol prioritizes mutually respectful relationships, which will help to develop a more trusting relationship among vital stakeholders. We know that we need to build strong foundations for this process to be successful based on inclusive representation and trust. With this in mind, key community stakeholder engagement has begun. We are guided by Reimagine South Africa to ensure a responsible approach for navigating opportunities and challenges from the perspectives of key stakeholders in a meaningful way. They are following what is referred to as the Litessema process, which aims to facilitate conversations to promote walking together.
Key to trust holding, the Letsema process is iterative in nature, requiring a series of meetings with stakeholders through various phases of engagement. The 3rd building block is our opportunity to create or more specifically to co create social and economic development, 1st by optimally managing our business in a responsible way and in so doing creating and sustaining jobs, paying salaries and wages to employees who live and work in the community by paying taxes and royalties, channeling stronger flow of value into the local community through local procurement and creating direct and indirect economic opportunities that will ultimately lead to economic upliftment and social well-being. The first step in being able to do this was ensuring sustainability of the Morikana operations, which has now been achieved with the operations restored to profitability. Our recently announced commitment to invest ZAR 4,000,000,000 in the K4 project, creating 4,000 400 direct jobs over an extended future will have a major impact on the local economy and again, very importantly, ensure sustainability. Simply put, being a good neighbor is part of our social and economic compact with the communities.
And at the heart of this renewal program is a commitment to invest in and sustain our operations, our people and our communities. Again, we cannot do this alone. Our efforts towards economic restoration and growth require cross sector collaboration and can only bear fruit through identifying and unlocking opportunities for district wide economic programs. One of the aspects in this area that is receiving attention is assisting the Bapu Nation in identifying and recovering social development funds that were looted. As part of supporting the ESD creation process, I have also set up a CEO fund to incubate new business.
I'm under no illusion that the paths going forward will be a challenging one and that there will be times that we and other stakeholders will want more from one another and will not always agree on the way forward. But I am confident too that we, as South Africans, have the ability to find one another and to develop a new vision for where we want to be and work to achieve that. From Sibanye Stillwater, we give our commitment towards this renewal process and will frequently and openly report with all our stakeholders in the months years to come. Let Sema, let's walk together.
Thank you, Neil, Sabula and Amchicas for your encouraging message representing an important commitment to accountability and submitting the leadership and the institution of Sibanye to the Litesmo process. And with that, we would like to hand over to a prerecord animation that is going to cite some of the work that's been covered on the ground. Thank you once again to Sibanye and the team for preparing that brief animation and also to Neil for his encouraging message. I'd like to take this opportunity as the Executive Director of Reimagine SA to do a high level summary of the LODERMA process, what it actually entails and the progress that we have made at a very high level thus far. If I can ask the technical team to just project the infographic, please.
So as you see in the diagram attached, this gives a high level approach of what we have committed to working with in with Sibanye and the community within the community of Marikana. As spoken to, we as Reimagine SA are an institution rooted in Ubuntu. And we use the principles of Ubuntu to communicate excuse me, to connect communities to opportunities for building an equal South Africa, where people are included, self confident and inspired one community at a time. The Lithermo process has 6 in-depth steps, but as a summary to facilitating Walking Together, we begin with the step of organizing, which is using the LYZEMO process to make sure that in the journey of healing, everyone's voice is heard and respected. We engage to talk about the past and find ways to heal, share and build ideas together.
We connect to opportunities of community development, welfare and financial security as highlighted at a high level by Neil. And we're working together to our future reimagined where we are inspired and work to create by building ideas and opportunities for independent, sustainable and successful business opportunities for employment for all community members and we're doing this together. Again, to reinforce the idea of walking together, it's about communication, it's about collaboration and it's about co creation. The importance is inclusion and dignity of all stakeholders, sharing of wisdom and knowledge and expertise, both in the modern sense and predominantly in the traditional sense and bringing that to the form in order to build success for each other and make sure that we're building healthy, thriving communities from the bottom up. Healing in our community is paramount and this requires respect and inclusion and in our meeting community members to understand each other's needs, work working excuse me towards a community level in Daba, where the intention is to talk, to share, to heal together and find better ways of living and working with the environment, co creating opportunities for employment and self employment in many areas that are currently within the mining sector and looking to build thriving alternative economies that will soon work towards living beyond the mining operations.
And with that and that high level summary of the work that we have been doing with Sibanye and along with some of the impacted stakeholders, we'd like to take this opportunity to begin the live Q and A, where we will address as a collective some of the questions that you may have, both about the program itself and some that have come up in the Q and A section. So with that, I would just need to check the box over here to see if there are any that have already been submitted. A question from Pertor Le Florent. How will Sibanye Stillwater ensure that Black employees feel that they are they matter and are recognized within the business?
So we have many, many forums where we have all our employees engaged and actively share with us and us with them concerns. And of course, it's not just about sharing concerns and understanding issues that affect individuals. It's about doing something about it. So we have many, many processes within the company of engagement. Now I want to say that in the past, this has been actually quite difficult because we've always wanted to default meeting face to face.
And of course, with a company that employs 80,000 people, it takes you a while to get around meeting people in a room face to face even if they're big rooms. What we have found, especially through the COVID process and the need to social distance that we've been able to use virtual mechanisms much more effectively. So in the last year, the engagement with employees has accelerated substantially. And it's not just a process of more video or virtual interactions. We can actually measure the impact of these engagements through various means.
And we can see that these mechanisms are now actually starting to be a lot more effective than they were in the past. So in simple terms, we want to hear from all our employees. We want to share information. We want to co develop strategy. And I think that employees of Sibanye Stillwater would acknowledge that through the use of virtual means, we have been able to do that.
And of course, we don't see racial divides. We see our employees as a group and certainly all employees are important. So, Luguia, that's really how we do it. On top of that, there's they are very conscious initiatives of winning the hearts and minds of our employees. We've done it through initiatives such as addressing indebtedness, improving social circumstances and so on.
But I'm not going to go into all those details.
Thank you, Neil. And I'd also like to take this opportunity to mention that 2 members, senior leaders of the Sibanye Stillwater Corporate Affairs and Stakeholder Engagements division with Mr. Thembangosi, along with a Ms. Tabsile Puma, are available to some of the detailed questions that sit within their portfolio. So I think when there are questions that are relevant to the work that they are not only have been doing over time, but some of the newer engagements that they have in the pipeline, we'll be able to forward those questions on to them.
And I have a question here speaking to that from Mr. Eric Tadesheimer. And his question is alluding to the video that was just shared by Umamu Ayesha Fundi, and he speaks to the following. What Mrs. Fundi is saying about alternative sustainable economic development have been in discussion for mining industry, but there is lack of implementation.
Aim to avoid ghost towns beyond mining and reskilling of employees to enable them to be absorbed by other industry beyond mining. The question here is, what is Sibanye doing? And are they committed to that end?
And let me pick that up initially, Le Bouje. And then I'd like to ask Themba and Tabisili to add in. I think that question is spot on in that there has been a lack in terms of the industry. I think, finding solutions to ongoing sustainability post mining. And we see it in very visibly in areas like Valcom and the other very good examples.
Clearly, one of the best ways, especially in a country that's endowed with very significant resources, is to, 1st of all, try and lengthen the period of mining. And certainly, talking about the Marikana renewal, talking about the Rustenburg and Marikana areas, there are very, very significant resources, which and one example is that the announcement of the K4 project adds another 50 years of life just on one project. Now I can assure you that we have, as a country, very significant PGM resources, which are going to be required by the rest of the world in very substantial amounts. And we have significant resources as a country that if we as partners, and I'm talking here about all the stakeholders, do the right things and nurture these natural resources and ensure proper and fair distribution of value, I can see sustainability from mining well in excess of 100 years and probably even longer. Now of course, we can't just bet on commodity prices.
We can't bet on what happens in 100 years. So of course, there are many initiatives that are looking at setting up other activities that will create sustainability. The one that appeals to us the most, and we've done a lot of work more specifically in the West Vids, is around agriculture. And in fact, that's going to be a pilot site that we believe will be successful. And we're not talking about small scale farming here.
We are really talking about developing industrial size agriculture. And of course, that can be rolled out and should be rolled out if it's successful in other areas as well. And then within smaller areas, there's the CEO fund that's been established to develop small and medium sized businesses. And of course, initially, they will obviously receive support from mining. But these businesses should be developed to obviously be sustainable in their own right.
So let me hand over to Themba just to give you more detail on those aspects and with specific examples. Thank
you. Thank you, Neil. And I think you spot on and you've currently put it, but I think I want to start by emphasizing the fact that we need to ensure that we are impactful in all our initiatives that we're doing. And for us to be able to do it's going to require that we work together with all stakeholders. I mean, this is basically the municipalities, the community leaders, the traditional authorities in areas where we operate to ensure that all of us have a common purpose, which is social development at heart, but secondly, ensuring that we create sustainable legacies in the future beyond the life of mine.
So what we're doing is, we acknowledge that we've got various initiatives and I've seen that there is a comment talking about agriculture and other skills from Miss Fundi. And we need to ensure that then we leverage what we have currently, which is skills of mining, but also add in our training interventions, which include portable skills, the skills of the future, such that we are able to sustain the parallel industries in the mining towns we operate and ensure that when the mining shafts close because there are finite resources, those people are able to then find jobs elsewhere in the parallel industries that would have created. And certainly, we also are mindful of the fact that SMMEs need to be allowed space to flourish. And some of the initiatives that we're doing include mentorship in terms of using the CEO fund, but also using Pagamani as a vehicle that then helps to give bridging capital for cash flow that small companies are struggling with, but also enable them via the mentorship and coaching programs that we have put in place.
And Lubuio, maybe I can also add that the LutzEMA process is exactly the process that we envisage actually helping us as a company answer some of these questions. I think the my notes, my comments in my presentation were very clear. We mustn't assume. We must listen. Of course, we can contribute.
But I think the whole renewal initiative is about actually listening and hearing what can be done or what the communities would actually like or suggest. And then, of course, we can apply our skills to assisting in developing those things and making sure that they make good sense. So we've just got some ideas. And of course, you can't do everything in series. So we have initiated some of these things.
But I think the renewal process is about listening very much to what the stakeholders and the communities also think, and we will do that.
And thank you for that.
Look, if I may put some last comment, which is going to be very critical on how we chart a new path. I think a lot has happened within the mining industry and our stakeholders, which has led to all sorts of mistrust. And I think as a starting point in this Latina process is also hoping that stakeholders will speak openly about where each party has gone wrong and what would it take for us to then undo their wrongs of the past. And I guess this acknowledgment has to happen across the various stakeholders, both the industry taking its acknowledgment part, but also local municipalities come in and as well as local communities where we've actually wasted value over the years by just not trusting each other and destroying certain things that are meant to benefit communities. So I am looking forward to this process being a very intentional process of listening to people, but listening with intent to really internalize what is being said and charting a way forward collectively.
And to that point, Potemba, I think the point around listening, a question we have here from Titus Clakane is that, as we move along towards this new journey of healing, have the widows been consulted? What about those who were injured are all being consulted as well?
Thembud, do you want to pick that one up or should I do it?
I'll pick it up then. Yes, we've actually gone on multistepular consultations. In fact, within the first day of us taking the keys at Marikana, we've had various consultations with stakeholders led by the CEO. And actually last year, when we started the initiative around rebuilding the houses that were not concluded by the AMCO initiative. We then also consulted the widows, we've consulted extended families, we've consulted the traditional leaders, we've also consulted the local community engagement forums and we've also consulted the DF Marie in terms of the various legacy initiatives that Olonmin had initiated but obviously did not complete.
So we are clear in our minds that we've actually consulted, but obviously, consultation is an ongoing process because the landscape shifts. And we do have standing consultative forums. When we did the Wall of Remembrance, we had consulted the families as well. And we also know that we have got Widows families in various parts of the world like in Mozambique, in Lesotho, in the Eastern Cape. And obviously, we're impacted to some extent last year by COVID because we couldn't travel.
Hence, we still have got a backlog on the houses. And those houses, now that we are at COVID level 1, we are able to travel to the various parts of the world, are now being constructed. And we will be concluding all the houses, God willing, by end of June this year such that when we have a commemoration of Marikana come 16 August, it's a commemoration with a different twist. Thanks.
Lebria, I think it's important for Titus to actually hear from me that one of the very first engagements that I had on, let's say, the completion of the Marikana deal was actually meeting with the widows and first of all, introducing myself, committing to the continuation of the trusts and the funds that had been set up by Lonmin, but also then understanding the challenges that the Widows were having. At that stage, we found that not all the Widows had been included. So to Titus' point, spot on. We made sure that we embraced all don't talk about 34, we talk about 44 widows. And we have accelerated the building of houses so that these processes, we can get some form of closure.
So I personally have met with the widows and I think they would all acknowledge that. Thank you, Lavoy.
Thank you, Neil. And I think as a manner of reintroducing Mamu Ayesha Fundi, She is in fact one of the women and guardians of the 1608 Trust. And that message and the contributions and thoughts are coming from one of the people that Titus is speaking to when raising the question about consulting the widows themselves. We do have several questions that are being raised about the types of projects that can be considered. And the invitation is for either Oportitamba or Gyniosis Tabsilla to address that.
But Neil, you're always welcome to touch on that as well.
Yes. I think, Liborio, I don't want to hog the floor. Themba and Tabisile are intimately involved. So why don't we give Tabisile a chance to talk about the type of projects as well.
There you go.
Thank you so much. So we've got a myriad of projects that we've looked into. And on the back of COVID, in particular, when we launched them, the program last year was to engage with communities to see how we could support them from their livelihood point of view given the impact of COVID. And to that extent, we have started together with religious leaders, a backyard organic guidance that we're hopeful that we can be able to extend to more households so that we can deal with the reality of hunger that we picked up on the back of COVID. And of course, we've got our current SLP projects.
This will be a combination of infrastructure projects as well as income generating projects that we found as the commitments by Lonmin and we are continuing to deliver. To the point made earlier, part of this process is to engage with communities, engage with government as part of the district development model to identify alternative economic activities that can ensure that the communities of Maritana and in fact the district are able to sustain their livelihoods long after the life of our operations have ended. So we are going to be calling on stakeholders to join us in coming up with those ideas because we don't want to impose ideas, but we want to co create the reality with them so that when we talk about a renewed Marikana, it is not a Sibanye program, but a collaborative effort of all the affected and impacted stakeholders. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Tafsiden. And I think there's a very important question asked by Usbondi Lukumalo. And touching on the speech presented by Neil, where there was mention that the Marigana massacre took place before Sibanye came into existence. What lessons would the company take into this chapter?
And given other legacy issues associated with the mining industry? I'd like to hand that over to the collective.
Yes. Thank you, Laguio. And it's again, Mr. Kumalo, it's a very good question. And I think if we listen to the Archbishop, even though we weren't here or we didn't even exist as a company, you would note that we accept our responsibility because we were all bystanders.
So that's the first point. I think in terms of legacy issues, I have promoted what we call the Zambezi protocol. And the Zambezi protocol was developed by a think tank by looking at what detracts from the investment in the resource sector. And principally, it's a lack of trust. And of course, in South Africa and our legacy issues, we are even more challenged.
So one of the aspects that we have been driving, and I've personally been driving it through the Minerals Council, is addressing this issue of trust, so that we don't make, the same mistakes that we've made in the past. Now one of the issues there is actually acknowledging the past, sincerely apologizing for what happened in the past and making sure that it never ever happens again. So I think we're all very clear on what are our legacy issues and establishing a social and economic compact that ensures fair distribution of value from the natural resources of our country to government, to communities, to shareholders and management plays that role of trying to find the balance. So we've done a lot of introspection. We understand exactly what is what are the legacy issues.
And as a very significant new South African company, we've been at the forefront of driving things like closure, improving facilities, reducing TB, addressing HIV in a very, let's say, constructive way, etcetera, etcetera. So we're very familiar with those things. We are a company that talks about the past, and we will never be part of allowing those type of things to happen. And of course, improving trust and letting the Zambezi protocol, which addresses a process of reestablishing trust. And today is one small example of saying, listen, we're not walking away from the Marikana disaster.
This is a step in renewal. But the very first step is honor. So don't forget, let's engage and then let's create together. So this is, in fact, the Zambezi protocol playing itself out in terms of rebuilding trust and making sure that the legacy issues are never allowed to happen again, whether it's Americana disaster, whether it's TB, whatever the issue may be, we will never allow those things to happen again. Thank you.
Thank you for
that. So, Lluia, if I may, I think another thing that we need to take note of in terms of what are the key lessons of the past is We should not let Marigana pain to belong to 1 stakeholder. So we should avoid getting 1 stakeholder to monopolize the Marigana pain. It's a collective pain that has affected the country and has actually been seen globally as one thing that divides the mining industry and communities. So I think one key thing going forward that we need to harness is tolerance and ensure that we do humanity better because human lives were lost, and we need to ensure that we have courageous conversations about what has gone wrong as we co create the new path.
But as we build a future, we should actually never forget to remember, as Honorable Matonsela has once said, that Marigana happened because as humans, we forgot to remember. And we should just keep that in mind as we go forward and create this new legacy that we all want. Thank you.
Thank you. And then on the point of having courageous conversations, we do have two questions, one from Jerome Lottering, whom I will also pair with a question from Alex Mitchelle over at News 24. And this is about incorporation of various different stakeholders. Alex Mitchel speaks to the engagement of unions and do they necessarily support this process. And Jerome Lottering speaks to a humble request of the community of Jacob Skorp being part of this process.
And I think that can then speak to do we have any mechanisms of bringing in various stakeholders who now answer this invitation to join this Malarekana renewal process and want to participate in working together.
Yes. Absolutely. And I'll go first, Themba, and then I'd like you to specifically pick up on organized labor. Organized labor has been invited to participate. I think it's safe to say at regional and local level, we have very good support and agreement.
But Themba, you can expand on your initiatives to, let's say, involve organized labor more. In terms of other stakeholders, absolutely, this is the opportunity to come forward and participate. So Alex, please make sure that you engage with us. There's no stakeholder that should be excluded in this process. Themba, you want to add on to the union and organized labor comments?
Thanks, Neil. Yes, we acknowledge the various leaders of the unions as kind of legitimate stakeholders in this process. And we've had various initiatives, particularly to engage with the AMCOL National Office on this matter. We know that the branches have been engaged and they're on board. And unfortunately, the national office hasn't joined today, but we are hopeful that we will persistent in our persuasion to say for us to get closure, we need to get all the collective voices to be heard and be part of the co creation middle.
So we will continue, Alex, to persuade the AMKO National Office to partake in this. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We are aware that there are still questions streaming in, but unfortunately, we are constrained by time. And please be assured that the questions that have been posted will be collected by the technical team and will be dealt with individually through the various different platforms that you have each locked on to. And with that, I would like to take this opportunity to let you know that Nexpo will be streaming in closing a video of the broad based livelihoods. And this is then an opportunity for any closing remarks that Neil, Themba or Sustubh Sibha may have.
And then we'll hand over to the video to essentially, usher us out of today's program. Over to the Sabineon team.
Thank you, Leroyo. Today is a small step forward, in my view, in the change in direction without forgetting about the cost. And in fact, absolutely not forgetting about the cost. But we will pursue the issues that have been raised previously, such as justice, such as restitution where it's still appropriate and so on. But today is about renewal.
And I think if I can ask everyone just to remember the 3 key bullets: honor, so we don't forget, and we never allow these things to happen again. Engage. Let's all engage. Let's put our differences aside. We are all dependent on each other.
And of course, that's the exciting part. We have a clean sheet. We have some ideas. We know there's going to be very many good ideas that come out of the communities and other stakeholder groups. Let's co create together and let's renew.
And I think as I listen to some of the videos, let's make Moricana different, so different to what the current perception is. I'm there to support that. Thank you.